Opposites by Sonia Sondheim

I hate the rain.

It’s cold and wet and soaks through my shoes and socks. It plasters my pants to my legs, ruins the plans for my outfit, and messes up my hair. The rain makes it hard to get to my car, go for a run, smoke a cigarette, or use my phone. The rain makes me depressed. To be fair, I’m already clinically depressed, but the rain makes it worse. It makes me feel trapped and sad and lonely, even when those feelings are completely uncalled for. Waking up to rain on a day when you can’t, or don’t feel like staying inside with hot chocolate and a good book, completely ruins your day. When it’s raining I feel exhausted just looking outside, and the thought of doing anything tires me out even more.


But here’s the thing, I also love the rain.


A rainy, foggy day makes me feel like I’m in the Irish countryside or in some indie movie. When I’m in the car I feel like if I look out the window I can be THAT one girl from THAT one movie teen movie in THAT one scene after she breaks up with her boyfriend or fights with her mom. I love going out in the rain with no umbrella. Feeling it soak into my hair and ruin my makeup and thinking that it doesn’t matter because it’s raining and everything feels temporary and permanent at the same time. I love how it turns the hills green, fixes droughts, and it’s the same rain that fell on the dinosaurs.


Sometimes things are opposites at once.
Sometimes you hate something as much as you love it.


It rained on my eighteenth birthday. Actually, no, rained is an understatement. It was a goddamn torrential downpour. I had a final for my improv class that day (please pretend I didn’t just admit to taking an improv class) and when I stepped out of my car and into a puddle that went above my ankle. I was drenched to the bone within seconds of getting out of my car. Umbrellas were useless, the rain was so heavy and the wind was like a battering ram. 

My friends and I were going into San Francisco to a friend’s apartment to party for my birthday. But, half the people I invited bailed out because they were terrified of crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in the rain at night. Completely valid reasoning, but I’m just trying to paint a picture of how bad it was. So bad a bunch of kids from NorCal, where you drive in fog so dense you can’t see two feet in front of you, were scared to drive in this rain. I didn’t care. The rain made me feel like I could do anything, so I decided I would do anything. Fuck it, I had just become an adult and the world was flooding. I felt invincible.

I hauled my friends into a car and we drove into the city. It was an insane ride, a car full of teenagers in the middle of a storm driving through the lower part of the headlands and across the bridge. The music was playing at an intensely high volume and we were talking at an even higher volume while rain destroyed visibility and slicked the roads. 

Don’t worry, we made it to our destination in San Francisco without any problems. Maybe I love the rain because of this, because even when it’s irritating, it’s never let me down. The rain has never made me scared. Fear was the last emotion we were feeling running up the stairs of my friend’s 2 story walk-up and collapsing on the floor, soaking wet and drunk on nothing but rain and teenage (now technically adult) hormones. 

We were pissed at the rain for making the night so complicated and dramatic, but we loved it for those same reasons. We were teenagers in the middle of a downpour that could ruin a night, but we were the badasses who fought our way through it. 

Sometimes there are things that make you feel invincible when you could be scared. Or angry when you could be embracing it.
Sometimes things are two opposites at once.
Sometimes those things are the best things.